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100 CHAPTER 3 The Qur’an To Muslims, the Qur’an is the literal and inimitable word of God. The voice of the Qur’an is that of God, not Muhammad, who was only a prophet and messenger of God and whose major role was only to convey the divine word of God to the people. Muhammad’s recitations of the Qur’an in the public square were therefore nothing less than the precise and literal recital of the divine word that was revealed to him. He was not a messiah and had no supernatural power of his own. The Qur’an is the product of God and God alone. The “omniscient narrator” of the Qur’an, therefore, is God, and God is often referred to in the plural, the “majestic form,” We. Such phrases as the following are quite common: Thus do We reward the righteous . . . , So when Our commandment came to pass . . . , We revealed to Moses . . . , and so on. As noted earlier, “Qur’an” literally means “recitation.” The Hebrew parallel that Jews apply to their own scripture is Miqra’, “a thing that is read or recited,” from the Hebrew root q-r-’, “to read.” In the ancient world, very few specialized individuals were trained to read, so reading was almost by necessity an oral act, a means of communicating information through recitation of the inscribed words, like the proverbial town crier who would recite or call out a written message so that the community would receive it. The Hebrew root therefore also means “to cry out, call, invite, proclaim” as well as to read. The Qur’an came into history many centuries after the Torah, and its appearance reflects the changes in writing technology of the time. Rather than appearing in the form of scrolls, as in the case of the Torah, the Qur’an 101 C H A P T E R T H I R T E E N appears in the form of a codex. “Codex” refers to the specific “book-form” that we associate with books today: a central binding and pages laid out flat. The physical book-form of the Qur’an is usually called mus .h . af in Arabic. Other terms for divine scripture found in the Qur’an itself are “the writing” (al-kitāb), “what has been sent down” (al-tanzīl), the guidance (al-hudā), and “the criterion” (al-furqān) for dividing between truth and falsehood, though it probably derives from the Aramaic word for redemption because of its redemptive nature. The most common term used today and printed on most Arabic texts of the Qur’an is “The Noble Qur’an” (al-qur’ān al-karīm). According to Muslim consensus, only the Arabic language text qualifies to be called the Qur’an. A translation of the Qur’an is therefore not the same as the Arabic-language Qur’an. The process of translation requires that the translator choose among a variety of words and styles of prose to convey meaning from one language to another. Even the most literal translations require that translators decide how to convey what they think is the meaning , and that process is inevitably interpretive. Technically speaking, therefore , translations of the Qur’an are interpretations, and are therefore not considered the true al-Qur’ān al-Karīm. Each of the three great monotheistic scriptures is revealed in its own unique manner. The core of the Hebrew Bible is the Torah, which was revealed in one grand revelation before the Israelites at Mount Sinai. The core of the New Testament is revealed through the personification of God in the person of Jesus, whose very speech was divine revelation and recorded in the Gospels . The Qur’an was revealed in serial form by God to Muhammad through the archangel Gabriel, who served as an intermediary between the perfection of the divinity and the imperfect reality that is the created flesh and blood of humanity, including the humanity Muhammad. The Qur’an, therefore, reflects the history of the mission of Muhammad from the moment he received his first revelation at the age of 40 to the last revelation shortly before his death at 62. Despite its serial nature, however, it is not organized chronologically and has extremely few references to historical or geographical context. Meccan and Medinan Revelations As noted in Part , universally accepted Islamic tradition understands that Muhammad received his first revelation while he was meditating in a shady spot on Mount Hira...

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